


Held Fast

by windandthestars



Category: Cold Mountain (2003)
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windandthestars/pseuds/windandthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the shining reflection of her face, be it in photograph or candle light there was hope, as there was in the thin gold chain held fast around her neck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Held Fast

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of a mix from the movie and the book. The necklace is of my own doing and appears in neither medium.

Early on in her life on there had been an unsuspecting joy marked by bird song and large fragrant blossoms. Even as the riches and the light airy freedom of the city had faded away, the joy had remained. This like all things had changed with the war, and in the years she has waited she has watched the world crumple around her, the weight of this new reality weighing heavily upon her. Even now, each morning greets her with the arduous task of removing herself from her bed, the one place in the house that's kept warm through the night. Each afternoon brings with it a new struggle, and each evening the sad recognition that yet another day has past without change. Ruby had eased some of this burden: the longing ache of loneliness. Yet through all this, she alone bares another weight, the weight of the fine gold chain around her neck.

It had been a gift from her father when the days had been warm, and her long summer evenings spent on the water, coddled and rocked by the sturdiest of boats. She hardly thinks of him or those days, when her hair, frizzy and loose from its knot, tangles in the chain or her fingers brush the small untarnished cross. Like everything else, it is now a reminder of the life that she lives; her burden upon the land, its weight around her neck. Yet it is love, not anguish that rests there in the shimmering golden hue.

It's not the same sepia as the portrait she had given Inman, but it reminds her of it all the same, perhaps because the though of Inman, like the necklace, makes her smile in a way that the stiff proper photographer had not. She had fallen for Inman long before that day, but it was that morning before his departure that she remembers most strongly: the feeling of his body pressed into the stiff lines of her bodice, his fingertips pressed through her carefully set hair to brush against her neck.

It was this weight that she at times feels most acutely, the feeling of his closeness and the hollow empty space that marked the distance between them. That day, in that moment she had felt the odd mix of joy and naiveté that is the most suitable reminder of her past. She was tied to him, this man she hardly knew, yet she knew his soul as he knew hers, she was sure of that. Dozens of small gold loops held her faith around her neck, reminding her.

He would come home to her. She knew that in the way she now knew the winter would end. She was not alone in this. She bore this new knowledge, its aches and its pains, in the same way he bore his. In the shining reflection of her face, be it in photograph or candle light there was hope, as there was in the thin gold chain held fast around her neck.

**Author's Note:**

> for kink_bingo: collars


End file.
